14 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Creative Writing, Inspiration, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing
Tags: audio books, bluetooth speakers, garlic harvest, Harry Potter books, NaBloPoMo 2015, Paris, Stephen Fry, Tasmania, worm farms
I’ve spent the afternoon in the garden, listening to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, avoiding listening to the news. Reports of the attacks in Paris came through this morning here in Australia and I’ve found it incredibly distressing. I love that city dearly and have been thinking of friends who live in France (all safe fortunately) and what they must be going through.
I pricked out seedlings into grow tubes, said hello to my ever-growing flock of worms and fed them scraps, planted out vegetables and generally lost myself in Quidditch, Polyjuice Potion and Harry, Ron and Hermione’s escapades.
As an avid reader, I think audio books are brilliant, particularly for works I’ve already read. But as a writer, I’m convinced anything worth reading should be read out loud. I even read essay drafts for university aloud and it’s surprising what I can learn from the exercise. Perhaps it’s the musician coming out in me, but I hear flow and tempo problems far more easily than I see them on the page.
For my gardening time, I have a wonderful little bluetooth speaker I picked up cheaply that connects easily to my smartphone. I usually put them both on an upturned pot and chill out while I work.
My baby speaker with Kunyani/Mt Wellington in the background
Late in the day, I decided to have a look at the main garlic bed. We’ve had quite a bit of rain the last few days and I noticed a few of the giants had toppled. It’s one of those plants where harvesting is crucial for long term storage and rain at this stage can mean mouldy heads. I adore garlic and I’ve been building up our stocks over the last few years, to the point where I might have enough for more than six months this time!
The start of this years’ garlic crop!
Note the pencil – these babies are huge! And this isn’t elephant garlic, but a particularly pungent local variety I’ve been growing for the last five years or so. The laundry smells amazing tonight, by the way!
I’ll be pulling the rest tomorrow and once they’re cured for a few days, I’ll be trimming the roots off and plaiting them for hanging in the kitchen 😀
Do you grow garlic? If so, how do you store it? Please leave a comment below.
13 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Brewing, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing
Tags: baby rabbits, food glut, mushrooms on sourdough toast, NaBloPoMo 2015, rhubarb, spring, Tasmania, urban farming
So, Friday again – where did the week go? I had to take the day off work today, my back is not behaving itself and I’m going pretty slow at the moment.
Still, I managed to feed the hungry beasts this morning, check that everything survived the rain and enjoy a little bit of sunshine. In the midst of my “go slow”, I had some gentle exercise, pulled a few weeds and picked some rhubarb. I have six plants of “Victoria” – the green variety – that get fed heavily a couple of times a year and give back a load of wonderful, tart stalks from the end of winter until the end of autumn.
I tend to roast bite-size pieces coated in brown sugar instead of stewing these days but I’ve got so much I’m thinking of making sparkling wine and syrup with some, as well as the usual crumble and Rhubarb Fool. (Any unusual suggestions or recipes would be appreciated!)
Rhubarb (Rheum rhabarbarum) is actually a vegetable rather than a fruit but it’s generally used for sweet dishes and drinks. Just make sure to remove the leaves before preparing and never let your chickens have any part of the plant – the oxalic acid make it lethal for poultry or rabbits.
And speaking of rabbits, I checked the babies this morning too. All are thriving, getting chubbier and growing fur 🙂
I found fresh mushrooms last night from the compost bags so had a filling breakfast of mushrooms on sourdough toast. I’m heading to my local plant nursery for some more mushroom compost next week!
Do you have any favourite recipes or bright ideas for using rhubarb? Please leave a comment below.
12 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Creative Writing, Inspiration, Inspiration, Music, Produce, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing
Tags: creative writing, exegesis, mushrooms, Neil Gaiman, online study, reading, Tasmania
Well, I’ve managed to do not very much today apart from write, and (so far) I’m pretty okay with it.
There’s a big easterly rain front over Tasmania and there’ll be little gardening action until Saturday afternoon. Usually, I’m the kind of person who has a checklist of things that I want to achieve every day, even if they’re ongoing tasks like music rehearsal, feeding “Wee Beastie” my sourdough plant, or tending to the animals. Writing tends to be shunted aside for when there’s time, especially at the moment, which is the busiest season in the garden.
Instead today, I’ve been writing poetry pieces for a university assignment and scoping out my 500 word exegesis. The concept of an exegesis is interesting, it’s a lot like writing liner notes for a recording or an introduction to a book but digs a little deeper into what informed the creation of the piece. In fact, many writers have used introductions as a type of exegesis, and they make fascinating reading for students of writing like me.
I recently read Neil Gaiman’s Trigger Warning, his latest collection of short fiction and I was really inspired by the introduction. Apart from the generalities, he offers a few notes about each story and it was really very instructive.
Meanwhile, I imagine the water tanks are full again *happy dancing* so I’m going to find my raincoat and head down the yard soon to collect eggs, pick salad for tonight’s dinner, do the evening feed and check for any new mushrooms. I buy bags of supposedly spent compost and usually get quite a lot out of them this time of year – and today’s humid, wet weather is perfect. Hopefully, there’ll be mushrooms on toast tomorrow 😀
Mushrooms from the garden
What’s your favourite way to spend a rainy day? Leave a comment – I love to hear from you!
11 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Biography, Creative Writing, Produce, Urban Farming, Writing
Tags: asparagus, egg glut, eggplant, Lemon Meringue Pie, study, Tasmania, urban farming
I consider myself a very lucky woman.
I’m surrounded by loving friends and family; I have ready access to good, clean food; I’m studying things that move and inspire me and I get paid to do things I love.
This was driven home yesterday when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Listened-To made his first ever Lemon Meringue Pie. I made the pie crust and stepped him through the process of separating eggs (something he’d never done before), making the curd, getting the meringue the right consistency and so on. He is a very accomplished cook but hasn’t much experience with baking. We used a recipe from and old CWA (Country Women’s Association) cookbook and reduced the sugar to suit our tastes. It was good for me as I realised that as bullet proof as the CWA recipes are, there’s a lot of assumed knowledge in them about technique.
The lemons came from my friend Sara, so we knew they were clean and chemical free and it was another way to deal with the ongoing egg glut. It was a very fun afternoon, with my son turning up halfway through to make everyone cups of tea, poke fun and offer suggestions. We had a great time 😀
The result was delicious, though we’ll reduce the sugar even further next time.
Smiley Meringue
Healthy new Eggplant growth
This morning I had a brainwave in the garden about my uni assignment – that I confess I haven’t fully written up yet but I’ll get there! And there were two delightful surprises that any gardener will recognise and understand.
Firstly, a well established finger eggplant in the greenhouse I thought was beyond hope has started shooting again. I grew three from seed about four years ago and because of the unpredictable weather we can get in southern Tasmania, I kept them in the greenhouse. All three overwintered quite well the first year but I lost two this last, very hard winter. At least there’s one left to gather seed from at the end of summer.
Secondly, and to my absolute delight, I discovered a punnet of very healthy asparagus seedlings at the back of a tray. Asparagus is probably my favourite vegetable, but I really can’t come at the shop bought article. It’s one of those things I only ever want to eat fresh from my own garden. It’s a slow process growing from seed, the viability is usually best in the first year and it takes 2-3 years to get plants to maturity. Then, you have asparagus for years!
I’ll be pricking these out into home made grow tubes in a couple of weeks and putting into a permanent bed in
Delicate Asparagus seedlings
December. The bed will be very heavily dug over and filled with as much old chicken poo and rabbit straw as I can lay my hands on. At the moment it’s full of potatoes that are in full flower and due to be dug in the next few weeks. Potatoes grow very well here and have been my “go to” crop for reclaiming lawn areas ever since I moved in but they do strip the soil of nutrients and asparagus are notoriously hungry feeders!
I’m incredibly grateful for all the good things in my life, it’s something that tends to get overlooked in the fast pace of the modern world. There never seems to be enough hours to do it all! Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get some more uni work done, some music rehearsal and just an hour or two of gardening later…….. 😉
What are you passionate about? Let me know in the comments – I love to hear from you all!
10 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Inspiration, Music, Performance, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Writing
Tags: Australian music, baby rabbits, Cassie O'Keefe, Griffith University, NaBloPoMo 2015, online learning, original music, professional musician, Tasmania, Tasmanian original music, The Homestead Tasmania
Wow, it’s Day 10 already – one third of the way through the month of blogging! It’s a little scary how fast the time has flown but I still haven’t run out of things to write about 😀
As many of you will be aware, there was much excitement on the weekend when the beautiful Boudica Bunny gave birth on Saturday morning.
I’m very pleased to say that all seven of them are very healthy, plump little bunnies, obviously being fed and already showing a light sheen of (mostly) white fur. There’s a couple with speckles of black skin like their mother but I think most of them are going to be like their father Beelzebun, who’s a crossbred Californian/New Zealand White. Newborns are more or less hairless and look like little pink peanuts but within the first week they grow an awful lot of fur! By this time next week they’ll be starting to open their eyes and get curious about the world.
For the next fortnight or more I’ve got loads of work coming my way, mostly with regard to my final assignment for my current online unit at Griffith University. I have to complete a creative piece (short story, short screenplay or three poems) and a 500 word exegesis about my process. I’ve decided to go with the poems as it’s closer to lyric writing which I feel comfortable with but different enough to be of value to my learning. Interestingly, I’ve been reading far more prose lately but it’s flavouring my work in an interesting way. I hope my tutor agrees!
And next Thursday I’m playing a gig at The Homestead in Hobart, supporting my good friend, Cassie O’Keefe. I’m really looking forward to it and hoping we can find the time to rehearse some material together between now and then. If you’re in southern Tasmania, Cassie’s playing a set this Friday the 13th at the Worlds End in Sandy Bay, which I’m hoping to get to.
So, posts will still be daily – I don’t want to stop now I’m a third of the way through – they’ll still contain bunny and gardening updates but they might be a little shorter…….
To finish, here’s a photo of Boudica and my other doe Bella, when they were little girls – about four or five months old. Note the overturned bowl, something Boudica still does when she’s finished her daily kibble ration ❤
Bella & Boudica
09 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Chickens, Music, Performance, Tasmania, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: chickens, good neighbours, NaBloPoMo 2015, Tasmania, urban farming, vegetable gardening
Further to yesterday’s post about the advertisement that labelled people who grow their own food as freaks, thank you so much for all your private (and universally positive) responses on social media. It means a tremendous amount to know that people are actually reading what I’m writing – as anyone who’s got a blog will know! I think where and how we source our food is an increasingly important issue – and obviously you folks do too.
I went to Oak Tasmania to play music today and as always, got there early to have lunch with my friends. And this is what I took…….
Freak Feast
In my lunchbox were two chopped hard boiled eggs, some torn English spinach and wild rocket, shredded baby kale, home grown alfalfa sprouts and a few fresh strawberries, all picked this morning. The only thing I didn’t grow was a half an avocado I cubed and tossed through it. A few drops of sesame oil and a sprinkle of rice wine vinegar made a lunch fit for any gardening freak 😉
And I have to share this with you all. I have the best neighbours ever! Yesterday Karen asked if I had a large square cake tin she could borrow for her daughter Georgia, who at 11 is getting very interested in baking. I found my old big tin at the back of the cupboard and apologised for it being so dusty – I don’t bake much now my son’s living independently.
Last night Karen knocked on the door to return the pan (cleaner than when I gave it to her!) and a plate with two huge slabs of fruit cake on it. Apparently, Georgia’s was given a recipe for fruit cake made with ginger ale and it’s a total winner, full of fruit, moist and not too sweet. I’ll have to see if she’s willing to share the recipe……. 😀
Georgia’s Fruit Cake
08 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Baking, Biography, Brewing, Chickens, Inspiration, Inspiration, Lyrics, Music, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening, Writing
Tags: happy human being, NaBloPoMo 2015, organic gardening, organic produce, super freak gardener, Tasmania
Late last week, Woolworths Australia released a new advertisement, featuring high profile personal trainer Michelle Bridges. The ad is spruiking a new line of frozen meals the supermarket chain developed with Bridges. During the advertisement, Bridges described people who grow their own food as “freaks” and suggested that precooked frozen food was preferable to fresh fruit and vegetables. As you can probably imagine, the uproar on social media was big enough to make the supermarket pull the ad almost immediately. There’s an article worth reading at the Guardian Australia.
Well, I guess I’ve been called worse in my time.
But it got me thinking about all the ways growing my own food makes me healthier and happier. First and foremost, I get a lot of physical exercise all year round gardening. Some of you might be aware I have a degenerative spinal condition, coupled with body-wide osteoarthritis. Over ten years ago, my then GP told me that I’d most likely be in a wheelchair within a couple of years. Not bloody likely! Occasionally, it lays me low and I need to use a walking stick but fortunately, acute episodes are rare these days. My current GP is convinced that my half an hour minimum in the garden has improved my core strength, muscle mass and general well-being – not to mention raise my normally low vitamin D levels and provide me with food.
And then there’s the food.
I started gardening at this house a week after we moved in, almost six years ago. I have potatoes for eight or nine months of the year and free range eggs about ten months. I grow enough garlic now for almost the whole year. I still buy brown onions and some carrots but stopped buying salad greens and herbs after about three months. The last couple of years I’ve been breeding meat rabbits as an ethical source of protein and I’m researching growing mushrooms and installing a beehive next spring. I’ve tweaked my salad greens into seasonal delights, and now we look forward to winter too because that means sweet, frosted kale, silverbeet, chicory, endives, corn salad and (my favourite) English spinach.
Baby raspberries
Fruit begins with rhubarb in September, and progresses through strawberries November and December, raspberries, boysenberries, youngberries, loganberries, silvanberries and (for the first time this year) blueberries from December to April and apricots, nectarines and plums from January to the end of March. I also have a peach and double graft apple I’m espaliering that will probably fruit next summer and a lemon tree that will be planted out in the autumn. And everything is picked fresh the day it’s needed so the nutrient levels are high. There is excess – I always grow too much – but it’s given to family and friends and I make cider and peri with excess fruit, fruit leather and dried chillies, beans and kale chips as well as freezing.
Blueberries starting to form
Also there’s a creative aspect of getting my hands in the earth – it makes me feel good about the world and gives me inspiration to write. When I’m in the garden, I lose all track of time and get to think about things I need to. I’ve solved some really big problems over the years out in that garden. I plan and plot and think about the season to come as well as the one I’m living in, it’s a window to the future.
And finally, there’s those wonderful moments when you can sit back, rest, enjoy and just be…………….. ❤
My favourite spot under the Chestnut tree
07 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Chickens, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: integrating chickens into an existing flock, meat rabbits, Tasmania, urban farming
Let’s start with a disclaimer. Apart from writing, performing, teaching and gardening, I keep chickens for eggs and breed rabbits as an ethical meat supply for my family. If this isn’t your thing, don’t bother reading any further – I don’t want to cause anyone any distress.
I had a wonderful day today – I spent most of it in the garden and the rest of it with my adult son, who’s recently returned from overseas 😀
This morning when I fed all the hungry beasts (six chickens and three rabbits) I had a talk to my gorgeous British Giant doe, Boudica. She had a “date” with my buck Beelzebun about a month ago and she was singularly unimpressed with his romantic advances – to the point where she drew blood on the poor boy! I really wasn’t sure if she was pregnant (she is a big girl!) and concerned that I’d have to rethink my breeding strategy for this season. My neighbour Karen was feeding her two pet bunnies and came with me to see Boudica in the nursery hutch.
Boudica, Queen of Rabbits
To our tremendous delight, we discovered seven little baby buns, wrapped in some of Boudica’s super soft belly fur in the nesting box. It was really lovely to share this with Karen, she is another person who is very dear to me and loves bunnies. No matter how often it happens, I always get a thrill from seeing new life in the yard.
Occasionally I sell a litter, some to other breeders and some as pets. Full grown, they are as big as a large cat and very placid and gentle creatures. But primarily I breed to provide an ethical meat supply to my family. I have a buck and two does and all three are much loved pets and with an average of nine kits per litter, I’m careful not to over service the girls.
The rest of the day I spent pricking out seedlings into home made grow tubes, giving Boudica raspberry leaves, collecting rhubarb seed and cutting back the kale flowers, a regular task this time of year which has become a bit of a weekly event.
My chickens adore kale, so every week I take a big bunch into their yard and chop it up for them. It made me realise how well the two new Isa Brown hens, B1 and B2 have integrated into the flock. They came from a local egg farmer about three months ago, who lets his chickens free range during the day and roost and lay in a barn at night. When the girls arrived, they were looking a little shabby and thin but they were extremely interested in food. There were a few weeks of pecking and chasing by the other hens, establishing the new pecking order, which really didn’t help. B1 in particular went through a full moult and was especially timid.
Today I was very conscious of how healthy they are now, fully feathered and with bright red crops – and how well they’ve assimilated into their new home. It’s taken time and quite a bit of patience, but the work has paid off and the hens are happy, very well fed and laying. B1 is still timid but a very sweet little hen, who likes to sit in my lap and peck my mobile phone when I try to take her picture ❤
B1 with Mephisto the Beautiful Barnevelder
06 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening
Tags: NaBloPoMo 2015, organic gardening, recycling, repurposing, Tasmania, toilet roll grow tubes
Well, it’s finally the end of the week, and I’m bushed! I was supposed to go to a gig tonight some friends are playing but I’m just too tired. Tomorrow, I’ll be out in the garden again and cooking a family dinner – my son’s coming over.
One of my jobs tomorrow is dealing with some of the seedlings I’ve grown in the last month. I love sitting in my greenhouse, listening to music or audio books while I work. It’s very relaxing.
With small seeds, such as chillies, herbs, salad greens and any brassicas (cabbage family, such as kale, broccoli and mustard greens) I use a three stage process.
First, I plant the seeds in punnets, keep them moist in the greenhouse and wait for the magic of new plants to happen. It’s silly but even after all these years I still get a thrill when I see new plants starting 🙂
New vegetables!
Secondly, I prick them out from the punnets into cardboard toilet rolls and let them grow on in the greenhouse until the roots are showing, which encourages downward root growth and eliminates transplant shock – one of the biggest killers of young seedlings. I didn’t realise until recently that this isn’t common knowledge! I cut the rolls in half first, which makes a perfect size for me and it doubles the number of mini grow tubes I have for the season. I’ve found that plastic trays from my few supermarket purchases are great to put the completed seedling tubes in, making them safe to carry around the greenhouse and the yard.
All recycled and ready to go!
The cardboard is just the right thickness to take up and hold moisture without falling apart immediately and I use a fairly compost-rich potting mix that holds together reasonably well. Like a lot of repetitive jobs, there’s a rhythm I get into when doing this. Perhaps it’s the musician taking over but I find this really relaxing. It takes practice when doing small, delicate seedlings but the best tip I can offer is go slowly – there’s no rush. Also, keep a permanent marker handy and I recommend marking the plant name and date on at least one if you’re doing a tray of the same thing. I also keep a garden journal next to me and write down what I’ve done in case something happens to obscure my one labelled tube.
Shungiku – Garland Chrysanthemum just done
A few days before I want to plant them, I take the trays of rolls out and let them harden off under a tree. The final stage is planting the seedlings still in their roll in the garden bed.
With big seeds like corn, beans, peas, pumpkins and zucchini I mark the first roll and loosely pack however many I need in a tray. Then I use a pencil or stick as a dibbler and put the seeds in and cover them. The snow peas and beans in the photograph below will give you some idea of the wonderful root growth and size of the plants.
Ready to go in the ground
These have been out hardening off since Tuesday and will be in the ground tomorrow 🙂
In the meantime, wherever you are, have a wonderful weekend and take care ❤
05 Nov 2015
by Debra Manskey
in Biography, Chickens, Produce, Urban Farming
Tags: free range eggs, NaBloPoMo 2015, pickled eggs recipe, putting food by, sterilising jars in oven, Tasmania
You might have gathered by now that my household’s been having difficulty keeping up with the incredible egg laying ability of my beautiful girls. This morning I had 26 eggs in the fridge, the oldest ones were only laid six days ago. I date my eggs with a pencil as soon as they come up to the house, something my mother used to do to keep track, and as you can see from the photo below, some of them are quite gigantic!
A dozen free range eggs and an old pickle jar, waiting to get together!
So, I decided to make very old fashioned Pickled Eggs. I haven’t had these since I was a child (yes – that long ago!) when my mother used to make them occasionally when we had a glut.
I still have some dried chilies from last year’s crop, so decided to use one in the pickling brew, along with allspice berries and a couple of bay leaves I dried a few years ago from a friend’s tree. The vinegar was mostly home made thanks to a vinegar “mother” my dear friend Sara gave me last year (see yesterday’s post about Sara – she’s pretty wonderful!) and topped up with some shop-bought white vinegar. Older eggs are actually better for hard boiling, as they’re easier to peel, so a few of mine have a few “dents” in them!
Old jars are something of a passion of mine and the one I used here has been home to many delicious creations. To sterilise it, I washed it thoroughly in hot soapy water, rinsed it well and put it in the oven (about 120 C) until all the water had evaporated. The lid went in a saucepan of clean water and simmered for 10 minutes. Here’s the recipe:
Pickled Eggs
Ingredients:
12 hard boiled eggs, peeled a clean, sterilised pickle jar and lid approximately 4 cups of vinegar
1 dried chili 2 bay leaves 4 or 5 allspice berries 1 teaspoon sugar a pinch of salt
Method:
Start by boiling the eggs for 8-10 minutes (you want them really hard for this). Once they’re cooked, plunge into cold water and tap each to stop them cooking any further. Put the clean, wet jar in a low oven to sterilise. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar, stir in the sugar and salt until dissolved with a wooden spoon. Add the allspice, chili and bay leaves and cover, reducing the heat. Simmer for about ten minutes. While it’s simmering, peel the eggs carefully, wash them in cold water to remove any tiny pieces of eggshell and put aside in a bowl.
Check the jar, if the water is completely evaporated it’s ready to use. Carefully remove it from the oven and put it on a board, preferably on the stove top next to the simmering pickle (this reduces the risk of spills and accidents). Take the sterilised lid out of the water with tongs and put it on the board to cool. Put the wooden spoon in the jar and roll the eggs in gently. Then, very carefully and slowly pour the hot vinegar and spices over the spoon and make sure the eggs are covered. Put the lid on firmly to create a seal and leave to cool. Label and date your jar and put them in a dark cupboard. They should be ready in 4-6 weeks – I’ll be trying mine on my birthday – and they will keep for up to a year.
The finished Pickled Eggs
What pickles do you love to make? Let me know in the comments 🙂
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